Fantasy Football Player Week 6 Wins Above Replacement Rankings
Six weeks in the books in the fantasy lands. Here's how things look when you grade all players while controlling for the production/scarcity of each position in PPR. Shout out to everyone that was brave enough to put Christian McCaffrey the #1 overall ranked player. This guy was on it:
No need to dive into some of my other rankings such as being down on Amon-Ra St. Brown and very high on Calvin Ridley. What an idiot!
Back to McCaffrey. The entire reason for putting him #1 overall was the usage opportunity and he's exceeded all of our wildest dreams on that. He's like a mid running back and top-tier wide receiver all in one. Imagine having an extra roster spot you could put lower level guys like Tyler Allgeier, JK Dobbins, or Saquon Barkley in to just have as a bonus. That's pretty much what he's doing. Now he's not giving you game-winning weeks, but he's absolutely crushing it. Even in standard leagues he's top five with 14 standard points as his worst performance of the season. This is much better than getting a guy that puts up 40 one week then leaves you hanging the next two.
Patrick Mahomes is another notable name this week as he moves into the QB1 spot worthy of a first round draft pick so far. I was in on him this year too ranking him a full-round above his ADP. Much like McCaffrey, the "be greedy when others are fearful" law applied. Terribly mid-2024 and an absolute dud in the Super Bowl gave everyone too negative of a picture for an obvious rebound year. This guy has been one of the few elites who has experience being a top-two fantasy quarterback.
George Pickens is an absolute sell high for me. He's the #1 overall WR in standard settings too. Obviously this might be hard to do since everyone knows CeeDee will be back soon, but some teams might be desperate enough to flip for him.
And by the way - as a side note - if we're going to get mad at players for fumbling at the goal line while starting their celebration, we have to do the same with those lucky enough to not have screwed up doing so. The next Desean Jackson will strike, and how mad would everyone be on him if he made it three weeks in a row someone in the NFL did this? Just imagine. George Pickens would be the first player people would have guessed this have happen to.
Alright - let's have fun now. Had a bad week? I sure did. Would have won on that Boswell field goal had he not slipped on the awful turf. Or that awful offensive PI call on Stefon Diggs. We all have our should have moments. But then again, like you maybe, I should have just picked these guys up for a smooth 146 points.
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Calvin Ridley also might have helped had he not did Calvin Ridley things like get hurt. Here's your saddest realistic team possible. How many did you have? 29.9 PPR points.
Curious how WAR works? Want the nerdy details? Give my new fantasy substack a try here. A little more business casual. I'll have something out later this week on some other stats to prep you for Week 7 too. But here's the full breakdown on how WAR is calculated.